Andrew Sullivan - EDWARDS ON THE WAR: I didn't think a huge amount of his speech as a work of rhetoric. Because his "two-America" riff had been chopped up for time constraints, it never quite caught fire the way it did in the primaries. But as politics, it was powerful. Edwards couldn't afford to be too good, in case he overshadow the big guy. And the speech had the important effect of showing Edwards to be someone who actually cares about ordinary people, an area where, to put it kindly, John Forbes Kerry is not terribly accomplished. Elizabeth Edwards is also a major asset: smart, self-made, empathetic. (I'm particularly impressed by how both of them have maintained what appears to be such a good marriage. You cannot help but respect anyone who keeps a marriage together after losing a child. It's one of the hardest things on earth.) It doesn't hurt that Elizabeth is a little on the heavy side either. Hey, someone has to look like America. But the speech itelf was remarkable for one single reason - and it's the same reason I've been banging on about since this infomercial began on Monday. Edwards gave an immensely tough, hawkish pro-war speech. They really are pulling a Kennedy in 1960. One passage stood out, resplendent:
We will lead strong alliances. We will safeguard and secure our weapons of mass destruction. We will strengthen our homeland security, protect our ports, protect our chemical plants, and support our firefighters, police officers, EMTs. We will always... We will always use our military might to keep the American people safe.
And we, John and I, we will have one clear unmistakable message for Al Qaida and these terrorists: You cannot run. You cannot hide. We will destroy you.
(By way of comparison, here's what yours truly, a pro-war neocon, proposed Kerry should say last Sunday night:
To the murderers of al Qaeda, let me say this. Do not even begin to interpret a Democratic victory as some sign that we will acquiesce to your murderous intent and nihilist politics. In the war against Jihadism, there is no Democrat or Republican. There is simply American. We will unite to defeat you and to secure our country.)
But there was more. Edwards committed his party to victory in Iraq:
With a new president who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq's neighbors, like Syria and Iran, don't stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq's economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and participate in the reconstruction. We can do this for the Iraqi people. We can do it for our own soldiers. And we will get this done right.
A new president will bring the world to our side, and with it a stable Iraq, a real chance for freedom and peace in the Middle East, including a safe and secure Israel.
Howard Dean may spin that as a way to bring troops home. But Edwards also pledged more troops and more defense spending as a whole. I fail to see how Joe Lieberman could quibble with much that was in Edwards' address.
BUSH VERSUS UNITY: Edwards was also smart to bring together two important themes of this convention: unity and war. Here's the critical passage:
The truth is, the truth is that what John and I want, what all of us want if for our children and our grandchildren to be the first generations that grown up in an America that's no longer divided by race. We must build one America. We must be one America, strong and united for another very important reason: because we are at war.
It seems to me that a major and legitimate criticism of president Bush is that a successful war-president does not split his own nation into two. But Bush's hard-knuckled politics, his inability to reconcile with the Democrats, or with recalcitrant allies, or to reach out to those who disagree with him, have led to a deepening divide. Some of this is not his fault. Some of it was fostered by the left. But the Democrats have at least had the good sense to see this as a weakness and to promote themselves in a positive fashion as a unifying force. And it remains true that no president who truly took the responsibility of wartime seriously would be approving semi-legal gerry-mandering in Texas, or brutal campaigning in the mid-terms, or a constituional amendment to marginalize an entire minority. But Bush and Rove made that choice; and now they face the consequences.
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FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: Domestically, I also thought Edwards was able to offer traditional Democratic support for the less fortunate without engaging in sour leftist resentment. I'm always moved by white Southern men of a certain generation who can also speak so effectively about civil rights. Not all of them have come around so passionately. And he balanced his big=spending with an honest description of how he'll pat for it:
And everybody listening here and at home is thinking one thing right now: OK, how are you going to pay for it? Right?
Well, let me tell you how we're going to pay for it. And I want to be very clear about this. We are going to keep and protect the tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans -- 98 percent. We're going to roll back -- we're going to roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And we're going to close corporate loopholes.
I'd rather cut spending. But I'm not a Democrat. And the Democrats can now claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility that the GOP, under Bush and Hastert and Frist, has abandoned. It will be hard for Bush to defend the tax cuts for the very rich in a debate, especially one framed this way by the Democrats.
THE GOP DILEMMA: How can Bush respond to this increasingly effective message? His only real choice is to say what the Republican machine has been saying: don't believe them. They're liars and liberals who will sell out the war and our military as soon as they get the chance. Or, as some readers often inform me, a vote for Kerry will be a vote for annihilation at the hands of terrorists. Or they will keep going back to Kerry's record. None of this is out of bounds, but I don't think it's very effective. The trouble is that this line of attack comes across as so negative, as rooted in fear rather than hope. What Edwards accomplished last night was to make the Dems seem like the optimists in this race - those unafraid of the dangers of the world, happy warriors, if you will. And Ronald Reagan proved that optimism wins in American politics. What Bush has to do, I think, is not take the bait and go even more negative. He must point to progress in Iraq and Afghanistan and remind people who made that possible. If things deteriorate, of course, then Bush really is up a creek. And the dour Cheney up against sunny Edwards won't help. But again, Edwards played a strong and canny card last night. This campaign, whatever else it is, is intelligent and determined. I've long believed that the result of this election will not be close. Either Bush will be re-elected decisively or he will lose decisively. The odds on the latter just shortened again. |
